by Charles Brady
Marching to the Wrong Tune
A couple of hours ago I was handed an interesting clipping from the letters page of a local Galway newspaper. I honestly wish that I knew the person’s name as I would agree with him a lot, but his name is with the editor and, anyway, that’s his business.
For once someone is talking some sense over the Israeli debacle. I doubt that anyone would disagree with the fact that Israel screwed up here. But when I see the usual rent-a-crowd of clowns demonstrating in Dublin and elsewhere over things that they don’t have a shagging clue about, the hackles just rise on me.
This letter said:
“Last Thursday you had a story saying that the Galway Left condemns Israel. At the end of the article Free Gaza declares that they have footage claiming that Israel started the violence that claimed nine lives. The videos that I have seen are of a mob of men waving steel bars and broken bottles, waiting for the soldiers to board and of beating and throwing soldiers from one deck to another; also on Sunday Turkey has released photos of the soldiers being beaten and dragged through the boat.”
“The group leading the flotilla has links to al-Qaida. Ten years ago when Turkey had an earthquake the Turkish government refused help from this group because of its links to terror. Also, why is there a blockade on Gaza—before the sea blockade, Israel’s navy stopped two boats coming from Iran full of not aid, but weapons to help destroy Israel. Cyprus stopped a boat, also from Iran, again full of not food or medical supplies, but weapons to help Hamas destroy Israel.”
“Only three weeks ago Hamas attacked and destroyed a school run by the UN which was being prepared as a summer school for girls and boys. Why? Because Hamas don’t want girls and boys to mix. So let’s show two sides to the story and then let people make up their mind about the problems in the Middle East. Also it is not just Israel which has a blockade on Gaza, it’s also Egypt, a fellow Muslim state.”
Now I have a couple of problems with that letter but overall I found it hell of refreshing to see an opposite side to this. (Of course I also found it nice to read someone who thinks like me for a change.) Not to worry, though: we have Tony Blair in their sorting everything out.
If it was anyone but that war criminal I’d almost feel sorry for the mess that he’s dealing with.
I’ll be damned—and probably will be anyway—if I can understand the outpouring of hate in Ireland towards Israel. It’s not the first time and it certainly won’t be the last; but I just don’t get it.
When I’ve said this to people I might as well have said that I’ve just been found guilty of interfering with farmyard animals, considering the looks I get. Actually, forget that: I would have had more sympathy if I actually had been found guilty of that rather than—gasp, shock, horror—saying that the Israelis might just have had legitimate concerns here.
After all, the wife of Ali Haydar Bengi, a Turkish national who was killed aboard the ‘Mavi Marmara’ came out with this beauty:
“He used to help the poor and oppressed. For years, he wanted to go to Palestine. And he constantly prayed to Allah to grant him Shahada (martyrdom).”
Come again? This aid worker or whatever the hell he was prayed every day for martyrdom? Am I missing something?
Yet here in Ireland in the last weeks we have the usual bunch of gobshites marching on the Israeli embassy, screaming for the removal of their ambassador and then whining about police brutality when they are not allowed to behave like the clowns that they are.
I’m aware of course that in Ireland these are not popular views, but what the hell: I have couple of people that I can call friends, I don’t need anymore.
I loved journalist Ian O’Doherty’s comment in the Irish Independent of June 4:
“…make no mistake, hatred for Israel far outweighs any love for the people of Gaza for many of these activists who tend to be a rag-bag collection of fundamentalists, extremists and ill-informed do-gooders who know that in the current climate it is far easier and socially acceptable to be seen as being on the Palestinian side than it is to be on the Israeli one.”
“In fact, this sense of moral and intellectual confusion was perfectly illustrated at the anti-Israel march outside their embassy earlier this week.” [One of them, Ian, one of them.]
“Pictured at the front of the demo, a bunch of people brandishing the Hamas flag.”
“And, just behind them, was a flag from the Labour Party’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered membership.”
“So. Let’s get this straight—a bunch of LBGT rights activists are happy to stand shoulder to shoulder with the party which has branded homosexuality a moral perversion which can only be dealt with by execution?”
“How far out of whack does your moral compass have to be before you go marching, as a gay person, beside people who openly declare that they want you dead?”
You have to admit, he has a point.
For a race that never stops moaning about eight hundred years of Britain poking their unwanted noses into other people’s business, the Irish are great at poking theirs into that of Israel.
I personally think that Israel made a total mess, error of judgement or just plain hames of this-—call it what you will. Yet I still fail to understand why the Irish in particular are so vehement on this. What has happened to Gaza is not right and I doubt that anyone could argue convincingly that it is.
Yet if I was a Jewish guy sitting having a coffee with his girlfriend and enjoying the sun in Tel Aviv I think that I would have the right to do that without worrying about some suicidal nutter coming into the café and blowing us both to bits in the name of freedom.
Oh, wait: I get it now. We had thirty years of homicidal maniacs doing just that right here in Ireland.
It’s all so clear to me now.
